Paul Griffiths (1) (1947–)

I'm slow sometimes: it was not until page 37 that I finally rumbled Griffiths. The book begins by purporting to be a novel about Marco Polo, reminiscing during his imprisonment to an Italian writer, Rustichello, who, it soon becomes clear, is both an unreliable amanuensis and an unreliable narrator, using the traveller's narrative merely as an excuse for his own self-indulgent flights of authorial fancy. But during the third "beginning again" of this convoluted pseudo-narrative, with its interminably ambling sentences and obsessive self-congratulatory lingering on momentary observations, the anachronistic mention of a camera prompted a sudden enlightenment. The book is not about Marco Polo, nor about Rustichello. Griffiths is using the fictional writer's unreliable scribing merely as an excuse for his own self-indulgent flights of authorial fancy. All the historical scenario is an extravagantly painted facade: behind the mirage of Griffiths pretending to write about Rustichello, pretending to write about Marco Polo, sits Griffiths writing about Griffiths.

Having achieved this realization, I don't really see the point of continuing to read the book: "What isn't known instantly isn't worth knowing" (p. 141). Certainly, at least, I shall not bother to read it sequentially, though I may dip in to some of the later sections for some of the shorter and more amusing renditions of Zen koans or mock-historical narratives a la Jorge Luis Borges, while avoiding the pointless pieces of collage such as the extract from the 1986 San Francisco telephone directory. The author gets approbatory comments from such lights of the firmament as Hilary Mantel and Rowan Williams, so I did wonder whether I was just too dense to appreciate the book, but I found a review by Carolyn See in the L.A. Times which made me feel a bit better.

MB 19-xi-2021

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1990-07-16-vw-47-story.html… (mais)

I was always going to love this book. I was in love with Beethoven when I was a teenager: I was completely obsessed. I listened to his music over and over again, I played as many of his piano works as I could manage, and I read everything about him that I could get my hands on. (I have not entirely grown out of this obsession, as The Spouse can attest as I repeatedly work my way through my collection of Beethoven recordings.)

So Mr Beethoven, a novel in which he lives a little longer and writes another magnificent late work, kept me utterly absorbed.

Shortlisted for the 2020 Goldsmith's Prize and the 2021 Republic of Consciousness Prize, and longlisted for the 2021 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction, Mr Beethoven is playful fiction, which subverts the genre. Its central—preposterous—premise is that Beethoven did not die in 1827, but lived long enough to travel to Boston in 1833 to produce a Biblical oratorio commissioned by the (amateur) Handel and Haydn Society. This graphic via a review by Paul Fulcher at Goodreads reproduces a newspaper clipping that confirms the existence of the commission.



Beethoven's hearing loss was severe by then, (and he was suffering from excruciating tinnitus too though this is not mentioned in the novel) but his task in the novel is eased by the presence of a young woman called Thankful, fluent in the sign language used extensively in Martha's Vineyard. (This was apparently because there was a high incidence of congenital deafness in Martha'a Vineyard at that time, because of intermarriage amongst people with a recessive genetic mutation. Like other aspects of this playful story, this is derived from historical fact.) In no time Beethoven masters this sign language and communication is established. (Well, it is fiction.) This enables him to tell the indignant librettist Ballou that his work is unusable, to fob off enquiries about how he's getting on, and to indulge in mild intrigues with Thankful who doesn't always translate exactly what is said to her. 'It's more of the same', she says, presumably keeping a straight face as she does so.

There are constant playful reminders that this is not your usual historical novel.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2021/06/02/mr-beethoven-by-paul-griffiths/… (mais)